


The Snow-Bear Maid

by deathwailart



Series: The Holy Sea [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Study, Cross-Generational Friendship, Gen, Leaving Home, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 10:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5287382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brunilda, daughter of Albas, the great country of ice floes and tundra far to the north leaves home to begin her new life as guard to queen Leandra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Snow-Bear Maid

It is a small fleet that leaves Albas when the ice finally retreats enough beneath the weak rays of the new year sun to allow more than just their great icebreakers forth, Brunilda safely welcomed aboard a ship sailed by one of the Castilean Sons of the Sea, a ship of strange men and women who shiver beneath their thin shirts and leather coats, all silk and no substance. It was a sign, so her family said, that the ice refused to part for so long, a sign that Albas wished to keep a daughter back, safely behind a wall of ice like the snow bear and the maiden in the ice thorn tower high in the stars. She knows them all well enough by now thanks to their prolonged stay courtesy of the thick sheets of ice all but for their captain who stayed on the ship to the titters of everyone who wasn't another sailor from Castileos, all of them looking up with sharp eyes. _He is a holy man_ , they would mutter, taking it in turns each morning and night to march across the ice floes surefooted as you please even when the wind lashed and the snow gave way to ice storms that could blind if you weren't careful. She had expected something like the holy men who lead the prayers and ceremonies when the ice parted enough to allow his ship close. Instead of an old sage, she found a man perhaps a little younger than her father; age hadn't ruined his face and his hair was still more black than grey, brown skin so much darker than her own (moon-kissed, that's what they called girls like her who were so pale that their veins were dark at the thin skin of their hands and wrists, across their feet and up their ankles, with their always flushed cheeks as if pinched by invisible fingers.) It was a Castilean thing, so they liked to tease, to be unable to guess an age so the captain and holy man she received had a neatly trimmed beard and a rakish moustache, a big warm smile and was prone to an awful lot of flourishing bows and grand sweeping gestures. No hunched figure with a face lined like a well-read map, no huge bushy beard always capped into stiff peaks with frost and yet somehow he was more devout than them and their dry old tomes.  
  
Few of them ever kept the long night vigils now, that was for the initiates and yet he had stayed upon his ship all alone for so long in the dark.  
  
Her last week in Albas is learning to part with heavy garments under the scrutiny of mothers and advisors, the woman who guarded the queen's mother returned home with skin that will never be pale as theirs again from hours spent in the hot sun and she is always burrowed in her furs enough to be called a bear by the little ones and those who think she can't hear them.  
  
Brunilda has no desire to be a bear and it's less the leaving and more the returning as someone so strange who has forgotten the ice in her veins because it has melted that has her absently rubbing her cheeks in her furs every chance she gets as they all discuss light fabrics and leather, things that breathe but protect and the silks they sent for are too flimsy to be practical surely. So she asks the sailors who huddle under borrowed furs around fires with a strong drink to play at cards and dice and it might be improper elsewhere to let strangers into the chambers of a noble lady but this is Albas and it is cold, it is always so cold and warmth is to be shared no matter be they friend or stranger, man or beast.   
  
She thanks them for their counsel with heavy garments to keep them warm, finding suitable finery for she won't be seen as if travelling with vagrants even before they depart but the captain always smiles, shakes his head and returns to his ship, breathing hard into his chapped hands against the cold as the snow frosts his hair and beard and makes him look too wise.  
  
Her last week is a blur of kneeling in the snow with her siblings and building castles with them, digging deep trenches and play fighting, stealing her mother's heavy bearskin with the claws and the snarling face intact to chase them until they attack at once and wrestle her to the ground, her sole older sibling looking on with a pained smile beneath his dark beard. She ignores him, settles on tickling the little ones with the bear claws curled in her fists.  
  
"Papa says there's no snow where you're going," her youngest brother says, lisping through his two lost front teeth and she thinks of how she will never see him grow, how she will not tease him about his first whiskers.  
  
"They have sand instead," a little sister retorts, squirming away from Brunilda's fingers trying to find her sides.  
  
"Do we have sand?" That same brother asks and she sits up, crossing her legs and holding out her great bear arms to gather them all close to her side.  
  
"We have sand but it's grey and cold and it isn't like the sand in Castileos. Sand there is soft and gold and fine like the snow. I will build castles out of sand," Brunilda explains though she already knows it won't be the same, when she can't shave icicles down to make the front of the palace when she builds with her siblings, all of them with pink cheeks and red noses.  
  
"You can't build home with sand."  
  
She misses which mouth it came from but there's something under the childish sullen petulance that makes her heart ache like the ice dagger the maiden plunged through the breast of the hunter who came to kill the savage beast and free her only to find them one and the same.  
  
"I will," she says and her brother looks away then scoops a child under either arm, the bigger ones trailing after her like bear cubs do, leading them off to the next game. _I have no choice_ , she thinks and it tastes of salt.  
  
They feast before she goes because that's tradition everywhere it seems, a heavy banquet with roe spread over black bread, her favourite spiced sausage stew, mulled wine that has her flushing as she sits in the place of honour, by her mother's side. Her brother, though older, sits next to their father for the night and beside Brunilda sits the captain, quietly asking her about each dish when it's brought out to them, sharing toasts and making the other guests laugh. The crew in attendance are scattered throughout the hall and the first mate, a tall slim woman with a thick streak of grey in her hair and a nose like a hatchet, sits beside her brother and the two are deep in conversation, only stopping when there are toasts.  
  
She rubs noses with everyone when she goes, tears freezing on her cheeks but this is the land where a maid fell in love with a bear that slipped their skin for her, they are a people built to endure so much and she can manage this.   
  
The cabin is large, well-appointed and there are warm blankets for her and always mugs of spiced wine, rum or brandy pressed into her hand but she finds she sleeps for days at first, marking the passing of time by the rhythm of the ship. Shifts change with whistles, there are songs during the day but not by night, and often they weigh anchor when all goes black, unwilling to risk hitting an iceberg and there's a clattering and calling as gangplanks are extended between all the ships to making a floating city. No one told her which came first; did Castileos make itself like her ships or did her ships decide never to be homesick again by being ready to turn themselves into a nation in the midst of the ocean? She joins them after the first few days have passed, when the grief is less sharp, always escorted by the captain because he's a man of great manners though much rougher with his fellows than with her but she likes him all the same. Her tongue trips over their tongue, stilted pauses, accenting the wrong parts and her face flushes even when no one seems to care but this will have to be as her native tongue is to her one day, with the queen and courtly life, she can't afford to be seen as a great clumsy bear girl before them. Felix and his first mate agree when she tells them and she thinks the severe woman is smiling when they tell the crew to only address her in Castilean from now on.  
  
They're good enough to speak slower, to avoid what must be the shorthand sailors use, they'll speak differently at court, she knows that much from her own family. Her little siblings must be crying now, who will play the snow maiden in their games when the skin still dwarfs her next eldest sister? It aches to be so far from them as the ice reforms in their wake until the narwhals come to break it open and the seals and walruses; only then do icebreakers patrol in truth because that was how they came to this land once and ventured out, following wiser creatures than they. Albas and Castileos love the sea in different ways but there are some things both hold close and sacred. Common ground, she thinks, smiling as she ventures out onto the deck and to Felix as he stands tall as any man has ever stood, handsome, composed, a king of all he surveys but he's loved by his ship and crew, loving them in return and it shows in the smiles that crease his face. A face that's honest and it's why she settles, comfortable enough to chat quietly out here even if the wind and calling songs of the sailors drown out her voice to anyone but them.  
  
"Why are we the only country your rulers send such a fleet to? In other lands, it's their own ships, isn't it?" She asks, huddled down on the floor, wrapped in warm furs and with a steaming cup of spiced wine the cook had told her to sip slowly. The warmth that flows through her is slow, thick like syrup and it pools to spread outward. She feels flushed and it at least makes the loss of home melt, even for a moment. After all, what is ice but water, frozen? It can melt and freeze, melt and freeze. Perhaps it's why her people have always had such a strong relationship with Castileos.  
  
"You've got your own ships but some of what we bring to you has to be guarded – you buy all that salt from us, we buy plenty from you we couldn't get elsewhere. The other nations sail too but Albas and Castileos…" The captain – Felix, he's been telling her to call him Felix since the start but she can't bring herself to do it, not quite yet when the polite formality of the court helps to keep the distance, helps her to pretend she'll be going back – trails off with a fond smile out over the horizon and down to her. "We understand the sea. We had the longest alliance. You've read your histories, right? Your guards always come back once their time serving is done."  
  
She thinks then, about the aunt who returned full of sorrow for a queen still living but unable to move beyond the grief in her heart. "Asking them is never the same as asking you.  
  
"Remember that – you ask sailors and captains, you get proper answers. The sea doesn't lie to you and that means that when it comes to what matters, you get the truth from us." Felix turns, giving her a smile that makes him seem older than he is and when he speaks, his voice is quiet. "I've got a girl back home, well I say girl, it's woman really isn't it, young woman, she'd be about your age by now."  
  
"Are her and her mother waiting for you at home?"  
  
The captain laughs, a rich deep belly laugh and she wonders if his daughter laughs like him. "No, well, my girl she'll wait for me at the docks because she'll know when my ship's due back but her mother is - you heard of Brides of the Sea this far away from the rest of us?" He watches her carefully, leaning casually against the wheel as she shakes her head, burrowing into her furs, still confused as to how Albas was cold to these sailors but the salt air of the open sea somehow isn't. "Doesn't matter really, you'll find out when you go but Brides belong to the sea same as us, same as us all but there's a few different bits to it, means we can't be together unless one or both of us gives up the vow part and we can't, it'd be like cutting off an arm or a leg. But we've got our girl and we're still good friends. We have an understanding about these things."  
  
She's more confused than ever, frowning as she wipes her runny nose as delicately as possible, the skin already tender to the touch from how often she has to do it and she dreads having to appear before Queen Leandra in a state, all chapped lips and red raw skin, looking like a child with a cold.  
  
"I don't understand, you can't be together? If you're both the sea, knowing what that means…" There had been so much preparation before she left, the sort of things that didn't matter much if you weren't going to go to Castileos itself and her aunt had neglected to divulge more. No one had told her aunt, no one had told the woman before her. It was to find out yourself though there had been others, like her parents who had gone away years ago for the royal wedding, ambassadors, merchants, anyone and everyone except her aunt with sun-darkened skin. Her aunt was at sea more often than not anyway now, captaining a great icebreaker with a smile, always looking out to the horizon.  
  
Felix sighs, turning the wheel and whistling three sharp notes and suddenly there's bustling activity, the sails unfurling and snapping before they fill out and the ship surges forward. She waits a long time for her answer, finishing her wine and rubbing at her stinging eyes though it only makes them worse, the skin red and sore.  
  
"We are together, she's of the sea as I am but we have our tales same as you and there are others who might tell it better than I." He sighs, something tightening in his shoulders but before she can say a thing he waves a hand. "You should head in, the winds will pick up."  
  
She knows a polite dismissal but she _is_ cold and he extends a hand to help her up, calling for another sailor to escort her back to her cabin where they stop for more wine and some of the hard biscuits the sailors eat instead of bread now that it's all finished. It barely lasted a night but unlike home where they can keep things on ice, out here at sea the damp eats into them and being sick in a ship sounds like torture. So she sleeps, curled up in the big pelt she brought from home, wrapped up as tight as she can muster the way her parents would tuck her in when she was little and they left whatever party or audiences they were hosting to tell her and her brother stories. She should write a letter perhaps, so she can send something when she arrives, or to keep track of the journey so she can look back on it one day and she wonders why her aunt told her so little, why someone who returned kept a wall of silence between them but it makes her think of the captain and his sudden reticence. She thinks of the bear who slipped their skin after a maiden kissed them and revealed herself to be the same, of the hunter that had hunted the bear and maiden both, but the blood on the blade isn't blood, it's blue and white, bursting forth the way the waves crash against ice and rock, against the hull.  
  
There's a knock at the door and she realises she's fallen asleep, face flushed, the world shifted the wrong way and her body is heavy when she opens the door to receive her evening meal and outside the world is black. The young sailor bringing the meal must think she's mad to eat outside but she smiles at them and eats tucked up in the fur, looking up at the sky. The maiden and her bear are still there, still shining down bright upon her and the icebergs could be clouds as the moon peeks out, shy as a new bride.  
  
They never talk about the moon, her and the captain, but they talk about the stars, the different names and how to find them halfway across the world and each night she stays out until the dawn stretches and yawns up and over the horizon as they pass the coasts of Ebeos, Estene, Corundus, the three sisters that sprawl out and into one another, fields into forests into plains, agriculture, lumber, deep mines. There are girls from there too, girls just like her and she might be the first or she might be the last, Albas is always one or the other. The captain and his crew have visited all three though he has never been further than the docks. He rests no place but his ship.  
  
Not even on Castileos does he break this rule she finds as he escorts her to the palace, along the floating markets into a country so blue and silver, so full of bustling people that her head spins but at least here he can return more easily. She's seen the maps, how 'country' for Castileos is a polite way of saying 'sprawling islands linked by bridges and waterways' but it's different of course to be there after a long voyage where the islands were miles and miles from one another, when there was often just the ocean as far as she could see and the night held back only by the lanterns of each ship.   
  
Queen Leandra awaits her at an island within an island, smaller than expected, dressed in shimmering white embroidered with silver stars that could be snowflakes and she smiles to her captain as he bows and presents Brunilda who drops into a deep curtsy. Felix kisses the hands of his queen who curiously has a model of his ship bound in her hair but there's no time to dwell on it as the introductions are made, Felix offering his arm as Brunilda finds her place behind the three of them as they venture into the palace, a retinue of sailors and servants unloading behind them.   
  
Later, she will wonder if her aunt found her place so easily as she sits in a bare room with weapons crafted for her hand, trying to find the bear and the maiden from a Castilean window.


End file.
